Rusty Hearts Is Basically Castlevania

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Which is great if you love Castlevania!

By Nick Kolan

Rusty Hearts is interesting to me, and it took me a little while to figure out why. I mean, at its core it is a session-based action MMO in the style of Dungeon Fighter Online, where you enter a dungeon that is divided into a series of rooms and fight your way from room to room, ultimately encountering some sort of boss. Like DFO, there's a rating system that takes into account how many abilities you use during a dungeon run as well as how well you perform combos. There are four playable characters, though I only saw two -- a scythe-wielding teenager and a brawler called Tude.

What stuck out about Rusty Hearts was the aesthetic. Although the art style looked like basic anime to an anime layman like myself, while playing the game, it felt distinctly similar to Castlevania. The enemies I was fighting were of supernatural origin -- skeletons and vampires and other Castlevania standards -- and the fast pace and heavily exaggerated actions only helped reinforce the impression that I was playing something akin to a Castlevania MMO.

The interaction between weapons and skills were very Castlevania-like as well. Depending on the weapon your character has equipped, their special abilities will have different effects. As the female character with a scythe, one of my moves would draw a line of fire along the ground. With a sword in hand, the same move would just hit enemies explosively. It reminded me of the way the card system worked in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, with each new card combo performing a different effect.

I can't say for sure whether the story follows the same pattern, as I saw little in the way of the story arc. Perfect World, the western publisher of Rusty Hearts, wants to keep most of the story under wraps for now. I hope that Rusty Hearts introduces enough to differentiate itself from the famous vampire-slaying series, though even if it doesn't, it'll be sure to attract a very specific audience. With the closed beta coming this July, will you be one of them? Let us know in the comments below.